The art car is a genre all to itself, that takes in some rather conservative displays featuring just a little bit of paint and an idea added to some works that are so far out in left field that they simply astound the viewer. The great works of Art Car brilliance obey no rules but their own, and the best Art Car artists have simply got an aesthetic appreciation beyond all norms.

It is no coincidence that at the height of the Pop Art movement, there were BMWs designed by Roy Lichtenstein and Andy Warhol. The area of the Art Car is not a place for the faint-hearted. Janis Joplin famously sang “Oh Lord, won’t you buy me a Mercedes Benz” – he did not do it, but she did get to drive a Porsche 356 painted in psychedelic patterns and colors. While Janis drove her crazy Porsche, fellow eccentric rock star John Lennon was rocking a Paisley-patterned Rolls Royce.

You will not find a shrinking violet behind the wheel of an Art Car, unless we are speaking literally and the violet is part of the décor. The entire hippie movement, it seems, took itself from place to place, and particularly to Woodstock, in day-glo painted camper vans. A burst of color, a pattern you will never have seen before without ingesting a lot of chemical enhancement, an idea that makes the viewer stand and watch with jaw on floor – that is the history of the Art Car.